The Good Guys Chronicles Box Set

by Eric Ugland

  As the opening widened, it only got more revolting. I was having some serious second thoughts about the whole hole idea. I could see larger, more solid pieces of waste floating on down, and I began to get the idea that we were seeing not just the sewage flow of the prison, but the entire trash disposal. Everything went out through this tube. A few solid swings, and a chunk of the stone floor tumbled into the brown water.

  The thunks on the floor were now matched by thunks at the door.

  “You have no idea where that goes, do you?” Nikolai asked.

  “No,” I said, in between swings of the pick, “but I know death is coming through that door.”

  The last piece I thought I needed crashed into the muck below.

  “Let’s go boys,” I said to the Lutra.

  Ragnar just shook his head. “I prefer death.”

  “Hirð order.”

  I got glares from the both of them, but they jumped in, and promptly disappeared from view.

  “Some rescue,” Emeline quipped, then jumped in feet first, holding her nose.

  “Already said that,” I replied, then I looked over at Nikolai. “Down to you and me.”

  “I am ready to die,” Nikolai said. “I will provide a rear guard.”

  “You’ll stop ‘em for what, a second? Maybe a second and a half? Useful.”

  I shoved him. He stumbled, lost his footing, and fell into the poop chute. But somehow he managed to do it while glaring daggers at me.

  The door behind me cracked, the wood starting to give under the onslaught of the guards.

  I watched the shit flow for a second. Then I jumped in.

  Chapter 114

  I’ve been in deep shit before, both literal and figurative. This, however, was a completely different experience. We were careening down basically the most foul waterslide you can possibly imagine, with a big push coming from behind.

  We hit a curve, and I went all the way around the dang pipe. Then there was a drop, then a long straightaway, where we gained more and more speed. Points of light marked our passage, as we zipped by cells and their poop holes. Curve, drop, straightaway. All the while gaining momentum. We were seriously motoring. If it weren’t for all the retching, I’d almost be having fun.

  I saw light up ahead. I shot forth from the pipe, sliding along a slick track of poop, riding along the surface of the feculent water until I came to a slow stop, engulfed by the sludge. I brought my feet down, and I felt the bottom. I hoped. But as I stood, my feet sank farther in until I either hit the floor, or there was just enough shit to support my weight.

  We’d entered into a rather strange chamber, something that looked like it had been adapted to its current use. Like it had been a tunnel at one point, looking a bit like subway tunnels, especially the unused ones. The room wasn’t especially wide, maybe twenty or thirty yards, but it was long. So much so that I couldn’t see the end. There were heavy braziers hanging down from the curved ceiling, and they burned, well, something. Maybe magic, or maybe there was some poor schlub who had to put fuel in them. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. There were piles of garbage here and there, piles of varying heights, some small, some nearly scraping the ceiling. Additional chutes deposited waste of differing types into the room at irregular intervals all the way down the tunnel. Some spewed out water, others more solid objects. It looked like there was just a ton of crap coming down into the tunnel. Neat.

  As soon as I had my bearings and while I was wiping the vomit from my beard, I looked for my people. Skeld and Ragnar were pulling Nikolai to his feet, and Emeline was running. To be fair, I understood her reaction, at least to a certain degree. We were just some weirdos who busted in to her cell and then took her from one shithole into another, well, bigger one.

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and managed to turn my head fast enough to just catch the butt end of a creature darting behind a pile of garbage. It had very sparse hair and spindly legs, more insect- or spider-like than mammalian.

  I felt a sharp pain in my left hamstring right before my entire leg went a bit numb. A small green notification popped up in my vision:

  Whoops, you’ve been poisoned.

  I spun and looked behind me. One of those insect-type things was running away. I fired off my identity spell, but got nothing back. It managed to slip beneath the surface of the scunge before I could get a read on it.

  My health was dropping — not fast — but it was going down all the same. And I had a feeling there had to be more to the poison, like a stamina debuff. That was something I always remembered from games. But since I had no stamina, that’d mean I had no debuff showing.

  “The bugs bite!” I shouted ahead to the hirð. “Keep them away from Nikolai!”

  I ran to them, but with my left leg not exactly working the way I wanted, it was more of a hop-run-jump thingie. Faster than walking, though I worried I was going to lose my boot in the muck below.

  Ahead, much to Nikolai’s chagrin, Skeld and Ragnar stood with their backs to him, trying to keep an eye on everything around them. They didn’t have weapons, so I reached into the bag of holding, I pulled out a spear, and tossed it to Ragnar.

  Probably should have warned him first.

  He saw the spear at the last minute. Poor guy made an effort to catch it, but he couldn’t get there in time, and the spear just disappeared into the muck. Ragnar gave me a look.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Behind you,” Skeld yelled.

  I turned. One of the bug creatures was trying to be all sneaky, and was just within striking range. With a spray of mud and poop, I kicked hard at the creature, catching him in the abdomen. His body seemed to almost wrap around my foot before shooting off into distance. There was a wet smack when it hit the curved ceiling, and a splash when it dropped into the water below.

  Slogging to the water, I caught up to my three compadres, and handed out weapons. Spears to Skeld and Ragnar, a sword to Nikolai, one he could barely hold up, and for me, a warhammer. I deposited my beginner’s pickaxe back into the bag, feeling ever so wistful over it.

  “We need to move,” I said. “Nikolai in the middle, I’ll watch the back, you two move in front. I’m going on instinct that there’s a door out of this madness somewhere at the other end.”

  I’d only taken a few steps when I noticed one of the bugs coming towards us. Slowly, perhaps trying to see how we’d react. I took the moment to throw the identification spell its way.

  Coprophagian Kazey

  Level 4 Monster

  The kazey gave me the heebie-jeebies. It had a long snout with a thin jaw full of very small teeth. Big compound eyes were on either side of its head, orbing out far enough I bet it could see nearly 360 degrees. Its legs went up first, then down, with clawed feet at the end that seemed to be able to grab, almost like they were tiny little hands. The abdomen was fat and turgid with long hairs sticking out from baby-poop yellow skin.

  For a moment, we just looked at each other.

  Then it charged me.

  Right behind him was another one.

  “They’re attacking!” I shouted. “Run!”

  “Run where?” came Ragnar’s reply.

  I chanced a look over my shoulder. We were being swarmed.

  Chapter 115

  I swung the hammer as hard as I could in a long low arc. The first bug that got hit liquefied. The heavy hammerhead making short work of the creatures coming towards me, towards us. But every one that was sent flying away left room for another two to attack.

  It wasn’t pretty, but I was effective with the hammer. Swing, swing, swing, the hammer smashed them left and right covering me with their goop. But the kazeys kept coming.

  Looking behind, the hirð were keeping the kazeys at bay, but they were certainly feeling the pressure.

  “To the wall,” Nikolai shouted, his voice sharp. “Montana leads, we follow. Get our backs to the wall!”

  Almost as one, we moved. I cleared the way while Skeld
and Ragnar kept Nikolai safe.

  A second later, Nikolai stepped behind me, and had his back up against the wall. Skeld to my right, and Ragnar my left. The bugs began to hold off. Who knows why — maybe they were waiting to see what we would do next.

  Much deeper muck had piled at the edge of the wall, giving us a slight bit of high ground. But our advantage quickly disappeared as I sunk back down into the poop.

  A kazey came closer, and Skeld shot his spear out, going straight through the creature’s head. But as quick as he had thrust the spear out, Skeld reset, ready to attack again.

  Another bug pushed forward. They seemed eager, if cautious. This time, it was my turn.

  I made a leap forward with the hammer and drove the kazey deep into the muck, destroying the thing. I followed up with another horizontal swing, clearing a group of the kazeys away in a stunning splash of gore. Their internals now externals all across the poop-scape. I stepped back, not wanting to get drawn out. Nikolai was a single hit from death.

  Moving as one, all the bugs burrowed down into the muck.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” I asked, looking back and forth across the muckscape, trying to find any clue of the creatures or their movement. My mind whirred, running through all sorts of possibilities. Nothing came to the fore. “I think we move. Backs to the wall. Head away from where we entered.”

  We went to our right, side-stepping slowly, keeping my torso straight forward, eyes scanning the water around us for any sign of movement. The numbness had basically left my leg, so the poison didn’t last that long, which was good.

  A scream echoed out from far to the right, the direction we were traveling, and also the direction Emeline had run off towards.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Nikolai said.

  “Don’t say that,” I snapped. “Any time someone says they have a bad feeling, something terrible happens.”

  “Perhaps because something bad was about to happen when someone felt that bad things were about to happen.”

  “Stop. You still shouldn’t say—”

  “You can say you feel no ill omens for what might happen here? The scream, the—”

  “Things are most definitely going poorly, Nik, and I definitely feel like shit is just going to get worse, but why the fuck tempt fate to double down the crap they’re about to throw at us.”

  Emeline came rushing back towards us, stomping through the muck. As my attention was diverted by the running girl and the realization that the world of Vuldranni had yet to invent bras, some of the kazeys struck, launching themselves out of the poop like missiles.

  I barely had time to react, so I just threw myself across Nikolai.

  A barrage of impacts rocked across my body, and my body lit up with flashes of pain before numbness took over. Skeld and Ragnar were slumped against the wall, barely moving, hardly breathing. I turned around, slowly, mainly because my body wasn’t exactly functioning the way I wanted it to.

  The kazeys were gone. Back into the muck.

  Emeline slammed into me, and pushed me in front of her.

  Even the act of watching her happened as if it was in slow motion. It was like being underwater.

  “Big monster,” Emeline said in between big breaths, “coming this way.”

  I frowned at her. “Monster?”

  “Why are all of you pissing your pants here?” she asked. “Not like anyone would notice.”

  “Fucking bug things attacking us.”

  “What? The kazeys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought you were a big fuck-off warrior and your knees are knocking over kazeys? The fuck? Little tots grind out xp by killing kazeys caught in the Osterstadt dumpsters. Worried about losing a hitpoint or two?”

  “And what the fuck were you running from?”

  She pointed. “That.”

  Following her finger gave me a look at something I never wanted to see. Not that I knew it before I saw it, but once I saw it, it was immediately something I wished I’d never seen. A large beast, a rotund almost spherical body squatted over short fat legs with long tentacles dragging behind him, large enough I couldn’t see their end. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a mouth anywhere on the thing. Nor any eyes. Or ears.

  A tentacle whipped up from the back of the creature, a giant eye smack in the middle of the pseudopod on the end of the appendage. The monster stopped moving closer to us, and, instead, took its eye and waved it over us slowly. I guess just taking the time to really look at us.

  The eye blinked.

  It grossed me out because there were definitely nasty things dropping off it. Bits of poop, fetid water, and other liquified nasties. The body dropped down in the muck. There was a sucking sound, and then the creature stood up again, its body moving about almost as if… I realized exactly what had happened, the creature had taken a bite of the muck and was chewing it. The mouth was on the bottom of its body.

  We were very likely in trouble, and I didn’t have many options available to me. I figured I’d try diplomacy.

  “Hey,” I said, “you mind if I do a little spell thingy real quick just to find out your name?”

  I spoke softly, carefully, like I would had I run into a bear out on Earth.

  No reaction from the creature, so I sent the spell its way.

  Vuilighelm

  Lvl ?? Monster

  “Well fuck,” I said. “You are one big motherfucker, aren’t you?”

  No response. But it didn’t move towards us, or seem like it was preparing to attack us.

  “Dude,” I said, “we’re not here to hurt you. We are just moving through, okay?”

  “That thing is a monster,” Emeline hissed into my ear. “It will kill us.”

  I hushed her.

  The water rippled a bit, and a kazey head poked out.

  The Vuilighelm’s fat tentacle whipped around in a blur, and slammed down on the creature. The tentacle popped back up, a goodly chunk of the kazey hanging beneath. There was a crunching noise from the tentacle, and kazey bits dropped into the murk. The dude had a mouth full of nasty-looking teeth on the flat of the end of his tentacle. This Vuilighelm was one ugly monster.

  Feeling was starting to come back to my body.

  “Tell you what,” I said, “we’re just going to leave. Lots of these little guys for you to eat around here.”

  I gave a swift kick into the muck, making a guess and hoping I’d get lucky. A lot of poop came up, but a kazey also flew out, its stupid legs waggling and flailing. The Vuilighelm tentacle snapped the kazey right out of the air, and I got to see the tentacle mouth and teeth in action, a horror in its own right.

  I started to move. Carefully, slowly, just walking like it wasn’t a big deal, keeping my weapon low in a completely non-threatening way.

  The Vuilighelm’s tentacle eye watched us move, but the body didn’t shift.

  Another Kazey poked its head above the surface, and like lightening, Vuilighelm was on it, his tentacle smashing down on the creature and snatching it up, munching on it.

  “I think we’re okay,” I whispered. “Maybe he’s used to people coming in here to add fuel to the braziers.”

  There was a pressure on my brain suddenly, as if something was trying to push into it in some manner. The Vuilighelm eye was focused directly on me, and the creature moved its tentacle eye closer and closer, and I decided to take a chance, and I forced my brain to relax and let the pressure in.

  “MORE!” a voice roared into my head with impressive force. I couldn’t help but take a step back and wince.

  Chapter 116

  The others around me did as well.

  “Oh yeah, totally fine,” Ragnar said through clenched teeth. “Just great.”

  “You want more, uh, kazeys,” I said to the Vuilighelm. “Right?”

  “MORE!”

  “Okay, I’ll take that as a yes.” I looked at my comrades. “Let’s go digging for kazeys.”

  I didn’t wait for the others b
ecause I figured they’d be disgusted. Instead, I just started digging into the shit. Any time I felt something solid, I’d grab it and throw it into the air. Sure, sometimes it was nothing but poop, but more often, I’d have a kazey leg. As soon as the kazey reached the air, the Vuilighelm tentacle would gobble it up.

  Skeld was doing something similar, but using his spear instead of the more disgusting means I engaged in. Every few steps, he’d fling another kazey out of the poop and into the air.

  Even Emeline got involved, despite her lack of weapon which forced her to mirror my tactics.

  Nikolai stepped forward, but I shook my head, indicating he better make a move towards the other end of the room. The spot where I bet there was some form of exit.

  Ragnar, ever the one to avoid as much work as possible, grabbed Nikolai’s rotting shirt, and pulled him along, acting as guard to the man.

  It was gruesome work, but at a certain point, my brain just sort of shut off, and the motions became routine. I lost track of the time we were doing it, and the number of creatures we fed to the Vuilighelm. But at some point in the revolting endeavor, I felt a strange caress on my back.

  “FRIEND,” came the roar into my brain.

  Clearly, Sidney had had little training in indoor voices. Or indoor psychic emanations.

  “FULL,” he roared.

  I stood up, my back screaming in protest. After a little stretching and some involuntary groans and sighs, and I was as good as poo. Given, you know, I was covered in the collective feces of the prison.

  Emeline was on her knees in the muck, exhausted, while Skeld leaned on his spear.

  “There’s a door back here,” came Ragnar’s yell from the other end of the room. “And clean water!”